12/06/2016

James Ponsoldt has been a director on the rise for a few years now, but for the most part he's kept his films strictly intimate with The Spectacular Now, Smashed, and The End of the Tour. His latest film (whatever happened to that Hillary Clinton biopic, eh?) sees him working on a much broader palette by adapting Dave Eggers' tech thriller, The Circle, for stars Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, and John Boyega.

While there was some hope the film would arrive in 2016 it isn't until now that we're getting the first trailer, so that's out of the question. Hanks plays a Steve Jobs-esque tech guru at a secretive Internet monopoly known as The Circle, which is like Google in that it links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system. Watson plays a talented recruit who uncovers a conspiracy within the company. Here's the synopsis:

Hanks plays the founder of the world’s largest tech and social media company. He encourages Watson’s character, who’s rising through the company ranks, to live her life with complete transparency — but no one is really safe when everyone is watching. The novel turns into a contemporary thriller about the perils of life in a digital age where personal data is collected, sifted and monetized and used for surveillance, rendering privacy obsolete.The Circle opens April 28th 2017.